Apple on Friday released its first developer beta for iOS 18.4, which adds a new “Priority Notifications” feature, powered by Apple Intelligence. The addition aims to help users manage their notifications by prioritizing important alerts and minimizing distractions from less important ones.
These priority notifications are displayed in a separate section on the phone’s Lock Screen. Apple Intelligence will analyze which notifications it believes should be shown in this section, but you can still swipe up to view all of your notifications.
Currently, the iPhone will sort notifications chronologically, with the most recent alerts displayed on top. With the new feature, you’ll see important notifications first — even if you received them a while ago when compared to others.
According to 9to5Mac, Priority Notifications is off by default, but you can enable the feature by heading to your Settings app, selecting the “Notifications” option, and then opening the “Prioritize Notifications” section. Here, you can toggle the feature on.
Apple announced today that Apple Intelligence is heading to the Vision Pro as part of visionOS 2.4. A beta version of the software is currently available for developers, while the public version is set for an April release. The tech giant also revealed Apple News+ Food, an upcoming section that will allow users to search and save recipes from dozens of existing News+ publishing partners.
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Recipe app developers just got new competition. On Friday, Apple introduced a soon-to-launch feature for Apple News+ subscribers called Apple News+ Food, a new section that will allow users to search, discover, save, and easily cook recipes from dozens of existing News+ publishing partners.
It’s set to roll out as part of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, but only in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.
Instead of building a stand-alone recipe app that could import content from all over the web — like recipes from blogs or TikTok videos — Apple News+ Food will only focus on recipes offered by Apple News+ publishers.
At launch, Apple aims to have north of 30 publishers on board, up from the 20 it’s currently testing. Existing partners include well-known brands like Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, Serious Eats, Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living, Delish, Real Simple, Country Living, and others. Tens of thousands of recipes will be available through the Apple News+ Food service, the company notes.
The new experience lets Apple’s publishing partners get their content in front of more consumers at a time when Google’s ability to refer direct traffic to their websites continues to decline.
iPhone and iPad users will be able to find a new Food section by scrolling down in the Apple News app’s Today feed. Here, they’ll find a featured recipe, curated by Apple’s editorial team, followed by a collection of food and dining-related stories, a broader recipe collection, plus links to the Food+ recipe catalog and their own saved recipes.
Apple notes that select food stories and recipes will also be available for users who do not subscribe to Apple News+.
The Apple News+ Food subscription service can be accessed in multiple ways.
You can either tap on the “More food” link from the Food section in the app’s Today tab or you can tap on the link to “Food” from the Following tab. (The latter is a more direct method if you want to bypass reading the news articles and go straight to the recipes.)
In the Food+ section, users will see the featured recipe, which is updated daily, alongside an expanded set of recommended stories related to their interests. That personalization improves the more users engage with the app.
Other curated sections include those that link to your saved recipes or other types of recipe collections, like those from certain publishers, a selection of popular recipes, or those focused on some type of theme — like healthy eating or weeknight chicken dinners, for example.
As users browse the recipes, they can choose to save a recipe directly to the News app for later reference.
If users are searching for something specific, they can look through Apple’s News+ Food’s recipe catalog, tapping on buttons to narrow searches by various filters like “dinner,” “easy,” “vegetarian,” “under 30 minutes,” and more. Filters are also available for searching across your saved recipes.
The recipes themselves are formatted to be clutter and ad-free, as well as easy to read — an experience that’s far less common on today’s web.
Key information — including the ingredients, steps, description, cooking time, servings, and more — is pulled out and featured in a clear format that highlights a photo of the dish and links back to the publisher’s website.
Other features Apple added also come in handy. One lets you tap on an ingredient to see the amount needed without having to scroll back to the ingredients list. Another lets you tap on the cooking time in the recipe’s instructions to automatically start a timer on your iPhone or iPad.
A dedicated cooking mode is available, too, which displays the recipe in full screen with larger text so you can follow instructions with minimal tapping and scrolling. In this mode, the screen will stay on, even if your device is normally set to turn off the screen after a period of time.
One thing Apple News+ Food is missing, however, is the ability to add your own recipes or those saved from elsewhere on the web, as well as any tools to import or export recipes to and from other apps. You also can’t save recipes directly from social media, though many home chefs today find recipes on places like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
With the launch of Apple News+ Food, the tech giant continues to inch its way into the mobile app ecosystem where it competes with third-party developers who help the company generate revenue through App Store purchases. Recent additions to the Apple app lineup over the past year or so include the party-planning app Invites, iOS 18’s new Passwords app, the Sports app, and the mobile Journal, for example.
Unlike independent developers, Apple can afford to launch new apps that don’t have to be supported by a business model other than continued iPhone sales. This puts smaller and indie developers at a distinct disadvantage.
In the case of Apple News+ Food, publishers weren’t additionally compensated for their recipes, TechCrunch understands. Instead, the experience is an extension of Apple’s existing relationship with its partners, where the iPhone maker generates revenue by selling ads within the publishers’ articles for a 30% cut of sales.
The new service requires an Apple News+ subscription, which is $12.99 per month in the U.S., £12.99 in the U.K., $16.99 in Canada, and $19.99 in Australia. That includes access to over 400 magazines, newspapers, and digital publishers.
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Apple Intelligence is heading to the Vision Pro as part of an upcoming operating system update. Apple confirmed on Friday that its generative AI platform will arrive on the extended reality headset as part of visionOS 2.4. A beta version of the software is currently available for developers. The public version is set for an April release.
Like the iPhone and Mac before it, the Vision Pro will receive Apple Intelligence updates in waves. The first set includes several familiar offerings, focused primarily on generating text and images. The company sees the addition of features like Rewrite, Proofread, and Summarize as key components for on-device workflow.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Apple has framed Vision Pro as a “spatial computing” device since the outset. For all the video, gaming, and other entertainment features, the company has sought to set the system apart from its extended reality predecessors by positioning it as an extension of desktop computing — or, as TechCrunch framed it in our review, “The infinite desktop.”
As it stands, composing text is a mixed bag on the headset. The default typing method requires the wearer to look at a letter, before pinching two fingers together to select. While well implemented, it’s cumbersome when faced with writing more than a word or two at a time. Voice addresses this bottleneck to a degree, and Apple’s recent AI-powered Siri supercharge bodes well for the smart assistant’s Vision Pro future.
Apple is banking on the combination of voice dictation and generative AI writing tools to deliver a smoother experience to convince more Vision Pro users to incorporate the headset into more of their existing workflows. At the very least, features like Message Summaries and email Smart Reply streamline interaction with different apps, without taking the user away from a given task.
Image Playground is the other big piece of the puzzle, bringing image generation to the wearable display as part of the visionOS 2.4 update. The feature is integrated directly into the visionOS Photos app, allowing users to create images through verbal prompts.
All of the above features have previously been rolled out on iOS, macOS, and iPadOS. There are no new Apple Intelligence features specific to Vision Pro arriving in this update.
Along with visionOS 2.4, Apple has also launched a Vision Pro iPhone app arriving with iOS 18.4, which is also now in beta. The app serves a few different purposes. Foremost is the ability to browse visionOS content, like TV shows and movies, which can then be transferred onto the headset. This feature appears to be, in part, a response to the limitations of wearing the headset, both in terms of personal comfort and battery life. If you’re going to be scrolling through content, you might as well do it from the comfort of your iPhone.
When an iPhone is unlocked and within proximity of the headset, the new app can also be used to manage guest accounts. The Vision Pro will prompt its owner when someone is attempting to sign in as a guest. A streaming image of the guest’s in-headset view is accessible through the new app, as well.
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YouTube is close to announcing a new lower-priced “premium lite” version of its subscription service, Bloomberg reports. The new tier is expected to launch in the United States, Australia, Germany, and Thailand “soon.”
The tier will give users access to YouTube’s library of podcasts and how-to clips without ads, Bloomberg notes. Premium lite will be targeted toward viewers who mainly want to watch videos other than music videos.
It’s unknown how much the tier will cost. While the premium lite tier has been in testing in some overseas markets, YouTube is gearing up to officially roll it out.
YouTube Premium costs $13.99 per month in the U.S. and lets subscribers watch anything on the platform without ads, including music videos.
YouTube’s new tier would come amid growing competition among platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, all looking to become the go-to destination for podcast listeners.
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